“I am truly sensible of the high honor the Congress has done me. But I tell you now, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.” – John Adams (2008)
George Washington.
What a dude.
Washington was called up to lead the Continental Army. Why? Everyone knew him, and most people liked him, and if they didn’t, they trusted him. He had also killed a lot of French, so that was another plus. George took up the sword.
Then, after winning, and being the most popular guy in the 13 colonies?
He put the sword down. This wasn’t totally unprecedented in history, but the numbers of men with enough strength to put down power after having wielded it is a pretty small club. There is Washington, there is Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, and you could make the case for Sulla and Diocletian, but it’s still a pretty small club.
He attended the Constitutional Convention and served as the leader. As the delegates wrote the Constitution, they looked to Washington and wrote the job with the questions WWGWD? firmly in mind.
Why did Washington not take power? He believed more in being American than being the boss. Washington was later elected the first president, and that was after not campaigning, saying he’d rather someone else do the job, and wrote to a friend that his feelings on being elected were, “not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.”
He didn’t like the job, and had to be convinced to not take his name out of contention for his second term. But when it was the third time to elect a president, he made it clear that he was done. It wasn’t a prize Washington sought, it was a duty he wasn’t keen on.
Someone will mention the Whiskey Rebellion. Washington personally took the field during the rebellion, and did so to protect the country: without rules, there would be no future for the country. Of the two people sentenced to death, Washington pardoned both, and in fact pardoned every American who requested a pardon.
Two terms became a precedent, and George Washington became the model for an American.
The next real crisis the Republic hit was Civil War 1.0. In this case, I’ll argue that both sides fought out of a shared conviction regarding what it meant to be an American. Robert E. Lee, for instance, was Revolutionary War Lt. Col. “Light Horse” Harry Lee’s son. Light Horse Harry was friends with Washington and idolized him.
What was clear, though, is that once Civil War 1.0 was over, it was over. The North and South reknitted the relationship. Was it sometimes ugly? Yes. But Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest III was killed when his bomber crashed in 1943, and Stonewall Jackson’s great-grandson’s fighter was shot down in 1944. Oh, and Patton’s grandfather was a colonel in the 22nd Virginia.
We got over it. We were still Americans. We shared the same civic virtues, the same blood as the founding stock, and would pick up Washington’s sword when called.
So American that when it came time for World War I mobilization, Americans signed up. World War I was an entirely unnecessary conflict from a strategic American standpoint, yet they learned to bayonet for a foreign king against a kaiser.
How American were Americans? Until Germany declared war on the United States, Charles Lindbergh had argued that entering the war in Europe was not in the interests of the United States. After declaration of war, however, he was turned down when he tried to sign up.
Regardless, Lindbergh flew over 50 combat missions in the Pacific. As a civilian. Because? Charles Lindbergh. Duh.
The whole thing started to fall apart in Vietnam. It was a war fought poorly by leadership that didn’t want to win on behalf of foreign governments that were only notable when they weren’t being amazingly corrupt. Lots of brave men bled there.
Still, we could have “won”. But the media shifted away from national solidarity towards blatant GloboLeftism.
American idealism evaporated and was replaced by a constant drumbeat of American villainy started in the 1970s and continued through the 1990s. American soldiers being awful were shown in countless movies like Platoon. The “grab a beer and a chick and let’s party” music of the 1980s was replaced by the “I need a new antidepressant because someone was mean” music of the 1990s and the “I’ma gonna killa white man” rap.
The scene was set for the final betrayal.
9/11. The September 11 attacks and their aftermath represented the final era “American” enlistment. Former NFL player Pat Tillman quit his NFL® job to enlist following 9/11, but ultimately grew disillusioned with the war in Afghanistan. Despite a good start, it soon became clear that we weren’t serious about the war, at all.
A far lesser George, George W. Bush, said that “They hate us for our freedoms”, “Islam is peace” and “Acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith”.
Did he ever hear about the stories actually in the Koran where their prophet ordered dozens of people assassinated? And also ordered the “peaceful beheading” of 600-900 men in Medina in one shot? Acts of violence are the fundamental tenets of that faith.
In a real nation, they would have been rounded up, and every non-European whose first language wasn’t English who was in America would have been shipped out on September 12. But no. We get W. telling everyone that if a person in the world will buy a Coke© then they’re just as American as you, bigot.
That was when we could see, finally, that America was no longer serious. We sent our troops out for a war on an abstract mass noun, terror. A twenty-year war that cost trillions and has (checks chart) only resulted in bringing in more foreigners who hate the horribly oppressive country that they fought to get in to.
Washington put the sword down to forge the identity of what an American was. At some point, someone has to pick it up to protect America.
“Veet-NAM” absolutely was the beginning of the end. Between Uncle Walter, Huntley/Brinkley, et al egging/ranting things on, public sentiment and patriotism started to rot. In 1974, the DOW collapsed by 50%. Graduated from college in ’74. Did 10+ interviews. No offers, so got a MBA in ’76. Took what I could…driving a heating oil truck for (at that time) my father in law.
Today, the idiots in DC know there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. War, war, war all the time. Trump’s turned into a stooge. Had some hope two years ago. That’s dissipated. Don’t see any George Washington on the horizon.
Walter was awful. Horrible commie.
Great piece on a very sad situation.
While “new sword boss” is still a theoretical possibility, the shytteshow explained by Kunstler this am ( https://www.kunstler.com/p/a-theory-of-everything ) goes like this:
– AG tells long-time Fed prosecutor that he can’t indict Obama because reasons;
– Fed prosecutor tells AG to eat dogsqueeze;
– FUSA (former USA) sinks faster and broader;
– President-elect Camacho loads his White House machine gun
is a much more likely outcome.
Damn it and them all.
CA
WRSA
I think Mr. Heston’s line at the end of Planet of the Apes is apt.
The Based Book Sale is still running today and tomorrow, and you can pick up some of my stories, including Repairs (Josh & Argos) and the brand new Camera Roll.
https://basedbooksale.substack.com/i/214325488/repairs
I talked to my friend yesterday and learned the Navy killed him in 1991 and his body is now finding out.
He was a boatswain’s mate on the USS Forrestal in the first Bush War, and the Navy refused to hand out protective masks when they were standing watch in the toxic plume of burning oil wells out in the Gulf. His bones hurt when I met him in 2003 and we were building hot rods, he’d do the kim-chee squat instead of standing for any length of time.
The blood test on Thursday showed his bones are outsourcing the problem to his blood, and he doesn’t have much time.
At least we sent our loved ones over there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here, and cheap gas was a happy bonus.
And Islam is in our rear view mirror.
“… all enemies, foreign and domestic;”
Let’s start with the last one, first.
The guy who is coming is for the whole world. They will love him and he will take power by deception and intrigue.
Until then, it’s up to us.
Just saw a funny and sad comment that George Floyd will be the founding father when the CPUSA (D) branch of the UNI returns.
“We will corrupt the West so bad that it stinks.”
Willi Munzenberg Frankfurt School Long March
He can replace the statue of justice – she can’t see and he can’t read.
Representative government was a bold experiment, but it seems to have entered a doom loop. I fear that it will require a Caesar to protect America, just as Spengler would have predicted.
Yup. I hope his name is “Dave”.
> Someone will mention the Whiskey Rebellion
In which Washington and his assistant Hamilton crushed honest money competing with fiat, so the Eastern establishment bankers could own the entire GDP in 10 years. Funny how you don’t read anything about how central banking works in any of the founding lawyers’ writings.
I missed that in Mojo Nixon’s album.
The problem is (spins wheel) the shrinking concept of a boundary/ border. This used to be an imaginary line where you could pay federal police forces to keep foreign people hundreds or thousands of miles away from you. Now the whole world and everybody in it fits into that little black screen in the palm of your hand. Everybody is Right There Right Now so what is the point of prioritizing keeping them far away physically? Borders seperate people. The only way to bring back a sense of isolation is to take down cellphone towers and the interne…
“…so what is the point of prioritizing keeping them far away physically?”
Until cell phones get a lot more advanced, no physical interaction and sensory interaction limited to sight and sounds .. no taste, touch or smell. And while it takes only one person to turn the volume down (or just hang up), in close physical proximity both have to agree to not interact.
To be sure, I personally think there certainly ARE very good reasons to prioritize keeping people outside of our country on the other side of a strong border. I was trying to identify what I believe is the shift in mentality of the majority of Americans due to re-definition of “physical space” by social media technology.
True. And they’re there in real time. Except for the Great Firewall.
Tariffs are DEI for factories, where winners and losers are picked not by customer preference for the produced goods and services, but by which board members are politically connected. If you make a tariff against foreign automobile tires, that tax revenue doesn’t go into a special Soviet five year plan spent only on domestic tire factories, it goes into general revenue to be wasted. Every tariff makes America weaker, as the winners’ income is taxed and paid out to the losers, and the winners’ greater productive output is lost. You aren’t in VDH’s political party, but your party’s platform is indistinguishable from VDH’s. If you want hiring decisions and university admissions to be decided by merit, then you should also want industrial success to be decided by merit too. That means the special snowflakes in today’s factories have to work and compete with foreigners, oh boo hoo. Maybe they’ll have to put their phones down for a few minutes and build a product.
Suppose you are protecting your uncompetitive domestic factories with DEI-tariffs. You plan to make 10% of the new product using your obsolete production processes, which cost 10 times more than the state of the art. Now 10% of the product is costing 10X more: .9 + (.1*10) = 1.9 You’ve almost doubled the cost of the product. If you were producing military airplanes or ships, your fleet is now half the size of your adversary’s who doesn’t do DEI-tariffs. You lose!
We are way past this all we make is MIC ships, bombs, and missiles and they are all to fight WW2 again. It might be time to think that the politicians have all made their deals and we have surrendered to China, informally of course.
Worse is the psyop and social-economic conditioning that has the “citizens” and invaders fighting in a burlap sack over crumbs while the empire of war parlays into yet another endless war.
For a nation born in war and never having ceased warring, the people are largely inert and unwilling to risk the crumbs for the future of their own people. Citizen soldiers of a frontier turned into consumers of bubbles and bondage.
The stock market will never go down again. Everything is fine.
The whole economy is so fake and gay gay at this point that the kids are gambling on their phones and “day trading” and influencing and the grown ups in the room see nothing wrong with that because the great casino in the Sky by cartels squabbling over who gets to render the next lot of white whales into fiat chits is based on the same “principles”.
The hero of commerce is the biggest rent-seeking and regulatory capture agent in human history and his president the greatest war profiteer and our biggest problem is moslems and “commies” now that it’s too late to actually shoot them at the border that is supposedly closed not that you could tell. Trust the plan. We have to destroy heritage America to set her free.
Spare us the libertarian nonsense . You say all of this and it is clear that you have never worked in manufacturing or tried to start any sort of manufacturing business.
If tariffs are DEI, then what do we call the minimum wage laws, OSHA requirements and regulatory fees that domestic manufacturers have to cover, but foreign manufacturers do not? If a govt believes that the welfare of society benefits by these laws and policies, then they should apply to anything being imported into the country as well, not just domestic producers.
If you are a larger manufacturer then you also (literally) have to deal with the DEI policies in the workforce which means you’ve hamstrung yourself even further. There is no way to get around this and any attempt to hire a true competent workforce will be beset by lawsuits.
Allow a US company to operate at the same cost structure as China and the Chinese company will soon be out of business.
Yep.
“Ricado? Retardo.”
Tariffs are the same kind of dumb as Musk wanting to pause US AI innovation. The competitors/enemies/armies in another country are not going to stop moving forward just because your legislators cripple your factories with red tape.
You could vote for libertarian politicians, but communism is a monkey trap where you cannot let go of the fantasy that elites will let the middle class be net tax recipients.
Again, single point in time. And China did tariff themselves into economic strength. And so did the United States. Please read history.
“university admissions to be decided by merit, then you should also want industrial success to be decided by merit too.”
Good catch. That would be a “nope”.
I want it decided by and for Our People, then we can choose by virtue from amongst them.
https://moonbattery.com/students-post-dance-videos-mocking-charlie-kirks-death/
Not surprised.
As goes the Church, so goes civilization… *cough* Vatican II *cough*
Very coincidental timing?
Funny, that . . .
IDK Vatican 1 or 2, not my circus.
But when you lose the seminaries, you’re sunk.
I’m waiting for Vatican 3: The Rise of the Machines.